Thursday, November 21, 2024 11/21/2024

Electrophysiological Approaches to Understanding Functional Organization of Speech in the Brain

Award Number: R01DC018579
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DEAFNESS AND OTHER COMMUNICATION DISORDERS
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

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ABSTRACT To understand speech, the human brain must parse and transform a noisy acoustic signal into meaningful linguistic content, including phonemes, syllables, words, and sentences. This involves determining the timing of important acoustic events, such as the onset of a sentence or a phrase. Following detection of these onsets, the content of the sentence must be determined. The posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG)—including the classic “Wernicke’s area”—is critical to this process, but until recently, little was known about its functional organization, and in particular how this functional organization changes throughout development. Our recent work showed that a spatially discrete region of the pSTG is critical for indicating when a sentence or phrase begins. This region is distinct spatially and functionally from more anterior “sustained” areas that encode phonetic feature information throughout a sentence. Functionally, both posterior onset and anterior sustained regions show short and long temporal integration times, respectively, suggesting complimentary roles in natural speech processing. Here, we propose an innovative approach using rare datasets where neural activity is recorded directly from the human auditory cortex and speech-related areas in pediatric patient participants undergoing clinical evaluation for epilepsy surgery. This method overcomes the spatial and temporal resolution limitations of other noninvasive procedures, and provides a rare window into the function of the human auditory cortex. The proposed study will use high resolution intracranial recordings to investigate how the brain detects acoustic onsets in natural speech sound mixtures, and how neurophysiological responses to these sounds change from early childhood to adolescence. Furthermore, we will investigate how these responses to onsets are modulated by context, including during attention and for self-generated sounds. In addition to providing insight into the basic functional organization of the human auditory cortex and cortical mechanisms for auditory scene analysis, this research has important implications for the development of a speech brain computer interface. Our results could also inform how speech and language are processed in natural contexts, which has implications for the treatment of developmental language disorders, auditory processing disorder, dyslexia, autism, and aphasia.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $491,913 )
2025	2025	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	5	11/1/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$491,913
														Subtotal = $491,913

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $614,707 )
2024	2024	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	002	4	5/1/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$54,657
2024	2024	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	001	4	4/22/2024	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$68,137
2024	2024	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	4	11/16/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$491,913
														Subtotal = $614,707

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $623,062 )
2023	2023	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	001	3	1/6/2023	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$76,492
2023	2023	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	3	11/17/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$491,913
2023	2023	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	002	3	1/20/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$54,657
														Subtotal = $623,062

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $588,595 )
2022	2022	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR MN 13	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	2	11/18/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$495,479
2022	2022	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	001	2	4/19/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$55,053
2022	2022	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	002	2	7/15/2022	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$38,063
														Subtotal = $588,595

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $566,545 )
2021	2021	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR MN 13	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	000	1	10/21/2020	NEW	$483,756
2021	2021	UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN	110 INNER CAMPUS DR MN 13	AUSTIN	TX	78712	TRAVIS	USA	Research Related to Deafness and Communication Disorders	001	1	10/26/2020	NEW	$82,789
														Subtotal = $566,545

Grand Total All Awards = $2,884,822

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Electrophysiological Approaches to Understanding Functional Organization of Speech in the Brain

Award Number: R01DC018579

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DEAFNESS AND OTHER COMMUNICATION DISORDERS

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

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